Why is Putin after Ukraine?

After the victory of World War II, much of Eastern Europe was invaded by the Soviet Union. The Union was a federal state comprised of several national republics, including Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan etc… and representing the largest country in the world. In consequence, the satellite states of Eastern Europe (Baltic states, Poland, Eastern Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria) experienced a regime change, embracing Communism and becoming de facto, subjects of the Soviet Union. Following the creation of an alliance in 1949 (called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO) between the other victors of the war (United States, Canada, United Kingdom) and the salvaged countries of Western Europe + Turkey (1952).

The Soviet Union on the other hand and the satellite states of Eastern Europe formed an Alliance, namely the Warsaw Pact in 1955 under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the head of USSR. Consequently, the Western bloc, represented by NATO countries and the Eastern Bloc, represented by Warsaw Pact members entered 35 years of Cold War (period of excessive militarization and rivalry without a direct fight but with proxy wars).?

The Cold War era ended when the Soviet Union recognized its defeat against Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative or namely Star Wars and the economic, political, ideological and military supremacy of the Western Bloc. For this reason, much of the Satellite states of Eastern Europe have chosen to overthrow the communist and pro-sovietic leaderships and embrace democracy and capitalism. With the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany added to successive revolutions in Romania, Poland, Eastern European countries left one by one the Warsaw Pact and joined the free, democratic and liberal Western world. The Soviet Union as well disbanded, with most of the Republics aligning themselves with Russia to form the Community of Independent States. Some Western Republics of the Soviet Union, namely the Baltic States and especially Ukraine (1991) have gained their independence and became democratic countries with freely elected leaders.

Then, one by one, former members of the Warsaw Pact, Eastern European countries started to align themselves with Europe, both in terms of trade but also in terms of ideology, choosing democracy over authoritarianism. Therefore, these countries chose to get closer to or even join NATO to distance themselves from the yoke of Russia.

Even so NATO could have refrained from expanding further to the East and choke Russia, it chose to accept countries which were newly independent democracies with Western ideologies and markets. After the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact countries, the first three countries to join NATO were Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic in 1999. In addition, these countries were followed with seven others in 2004, namely Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Bulgaria, many joining the European Union the same year. In consequence, this move was further reducing the sphere of influence of Russia. Some other nations joined NATO later (some of the remaining states of ex-Yugoslavia + Albania).

A former world superpower, one of the few nuclear powers with the world’s third largest army and one of the largest energy exporters was crumbling.

However, why didn’t Russia try to stop the expansion of NATO back in 2004 and only when Ukraine announced its alignment with the European Union and NATO, it became a problem for Vladimir Putin?

First, the year 2004 was only four years after the first election of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia (2000). The country he had inherited from Boris Yeltsin was on one side seriously weakened economically and politically and on the other, the capitalism had also not been fully rooted yet. Due to Yeltsin’s economic mismanagement and the rising inequalities and corruption, Vladimir Putin had to concentrate in the early years of his tenure in consolidating power, improving the economy (in 8 years, the economy grew by 72%) and had no possibility but to ignore the expansion of NATO in the West. Only after stabilizing its economy, Russia intervened in 2008 in Georgia (independent since 1991) to stop attempts of independence of South Ossetia.

Conversely, to understand the importance of Ukraine, we would therefore need to look at the early days of the Russian civilization. The cradle of the Slavic ethnical group called Rus is today’s Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia. Consider all three regions to represent members of the same family. For this reason, these Rus communities blended and wedded each other over many years. In fact, today’s Ukrainian capital Kiev, was the third capital of the Rus for 276 years between 882 and 1158. The prince Vladimir representing the Kievan Rus, not only chose Kiev as the Capital but also adopted Christianity as the new religion of the Russians. Therefore Kiev, is de facto, part of the Russian heritage and culture.

After its independence in 1991, Ukraine experienced a tumultuous period in politics, with successive presidential elections, economic mismanagement added to heavy corruption among the ex-soviet elites. After an assassination attempt in 2004, President Victor Yushchenko, a pro-European politician poisoned by russian spys, lost his seat in 2010 to his rival Victor Yanukovych, a close ally of Vladimir Putin and a native of the Donbas region (Donetsk Oblast), a separatist russian-speaking territory in Ukraine and currently annexed by the Russian troops. Yanukovych wanted Ukraine to increase its collaboration with the European Union while maintaining strong ties with Russia at the same time. He even declared that Russian should become the second official language in Ukraine. He was not opposed to an eventual accession to NATO but believed it wasn’t an urgent matter and in the best interest of Ukraine. As a matter of fact, he always expressed that Ukraine should keep its neutrality but also tried to improve economic and political ties with Russia.

Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, after he decided to cut ties with the European Union and reconcile Ukraine further with Russia. Many Ukrainians, for whom membership to the European Union was a way to improve the economic welfare, stop the corruption and cronyism, took to the streets to defy the President. In a couple of months, street demonstrations turned into social unrest and then into a “Revolution of Dignity”.

That same year, seeing the rise of a new order in Ukraine which most certainly would be defiant to Moscow, Vladimir Putin ordered the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The West adopted various sanctions to punish Russia. However, thanks to rising oil prices and the inevitable dependence of Western Europe on Russian oil and gas, these sanctions had little effect on Putin and his determination to increase his grip over Ukraine.

After the successive elections following Yanukovych’s ousting Volodymyr Zelensky became the new President of Ukraine in 2019, right after the amendment of Ukraine’s Constitution where Ukraine’s strategic decision to join the European Union as well as NATO has been added to the preamble.

And if that was not enough, following Zelensky’s election, the accelerated convergence of Ukraine to the European Union and NATO was the final blow for Vladimir Putin, a loyal soviet KGB agent for 15 years, who saw the last remaining stronghold of the Soviet era fall in the hands of the archnemesis of Russia. In addition, this situation was also unacceptable for Putin who considered Ukraine historically the cradle of the Russian civilization and an inseparable part of the Russian sphere of hegemony.

Vladimir Putin has been prepping the invasion of Ukraine since January 2021, after the disputed elections in the United States, thinking that a painful handover of power would weaken the United States and will force the country to focus on domestic issues rather than pay attention to what is happening on NATO’s Eastern flank. Quite the opposite, this was a serious and first miscalculation from the part of Vladimir Putin. The second miscalculation was that Putin expected that the invasion of a country which is not yet member of neither NATO nor the European Union, would leave NATO allies in discordance over the faith of a country many do not want to really see as member.?For NATO, Ukraine’s membership would have meant additional direct borders with Russia which consequently would have increased the risk of an undesired fight in which all NATO members would had to take part and thus trigger a global war. The third miscalculation was the belief that Ukrainians would not be motivated in putting up a fight against Russia, a much stronger neighbor with which Ukrainians have very strong ties and common history. Instead, the desire of self-determination and love of independence of Ukrainians ended up being much stronger than what Putin expected. Finally, the last and fourth miscalculation was in fact a very valuable one for NATO. Inspite the fact that Russia had invested heavily in modernizing its army with advanced weapons, the tactical approach of the Russian army had not evolved since the Cold War. Consequently, the use of raw power with massive numbers of tanks, missiles and aircraft revealed to be a weak approach against mobile, cheap and yet effective defensive weapons Ukraine had acquired over the last years from its western allies including Turkey. It felt like Russian commanders had not studied well Modern Warfare and learned lessons from the swift and decisive victory of the Azerbaijani army against the Armenian tanks in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.

Well, let’s come to today’s reality and what will happen next. Russia is advancing and most likely will be able to invade Kiev. The size of its army makes this sad reality inevitable. Furthermore, Russian commanders, although slowly, end up learning from their mistakes and adapt to the reality on the battlefield.

Thus, Vladimir Putin will not back down as he is heavily invested in this war. The miscalculations and the Ukrainian resistance have made him instead more aggressive. The Russian army is now bombarding civilians to break the resistance and force the capitulation. In addition, Putin needs the Ukrainians to back down to stop this conflict before the cost for Russia becomes even more unbearable. The increasingly heavy sanctions have only recently started to show their effect on the Russian economy. But the public opinion is more critical for Putin who has remained unshaken under sanctions since the annexation of Crimea. The more coffins are sent back to Russia, the harder it will be for Putin to defend the legitimacy of this war. A lengthy invasion and street fights will be the start of the end of Putin’s era.

Let’s remember the Russian demands and preconditions for a ceasefire: First, the neutrality of Ukraine and the declaration that NATO membership is off the table; Second, the demilitarization of Ukraine; Third, the ousting of Neo-Nazis from the government (with the President Zelensky being Jewish, that’s a laughable demand); Fourth, the recognition that Crimea is now part of Russia; Fifth, the acceptance of the independence of the separatist regions in the Donbas.

While Ukraine seems to be more and more inclined to accept the last two demands and perhaps the neutrality of Ukraine as well, the other conditions remain unacceptable making a peaceful resolution of the conflict nearly impossible. Besides, Russia is increasing its efforts to choke Kiev, topple the government and replace Zelensky with a pro-Russian puppet. In fact, Yanukovych who remains today in exile in Moscow is perhaps for Vladimir Putin the next legitimate leader of Ukraine who is seen by Putin to be unjustly deprived of his title some 8 years ago.

Finally, it is sad to recognize that armed fighting in Ukraine, whether against the Russian troops or eventually against a puppet government is not and will not be over any time soon.

Kerim Alain Bertrand

12 March 2022